OutInterceptor in SOAP bindings a.k.a how do I access HTTP request context?

[arteme]

Hi,

I have a Switchyard application that consumes an external SOAP service. This service uses cookies to track user sessions. By default, the SOAP component doesn't track cookies itself, nor does it set the SESSION_MAINTAIN_PROPERTY (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/javax/xml/ws/BindingProvider.html#SESSION_MAINTAIN_PROPERTY) on the underlying BindingProvider. I could maintain the HTTP cookies myself if only I had access to the HTTP request/reply contexts from code. I had a clever idea of using CXF's outInterceptors, but having configured out interceptors in the SOAP binding in my switchayard.xml, I couldn't see it executed at all. I tried to check the code for a place, where the outInterceptors would be installed on the client object at all. I can see the in/outInterceptors being installed only in the code that handles providing SOAP services, not consuming it.

The closest I can get to the HTTP connection is by adding a custom message composer, but that does not have access to the request context, reply context or cookie-related HTTP headers. If only org.switchyard.component.soap.OutbountHandler exported the dispatcher object (or the client object) in the Swithyard context, I would be well off on solving my problem. Manually maintaining cookies (as opposed to using SESSION_MAINTAIN_PROPERTY) would also allow me to keep multiple user sessions on the consumed SOAP service. This is not really a concern for me, but may be useful to someone in the future.

Of course, interceptors on the client object would solve my problem as well. But what to do in the meantime? I toyed around with the idea of supplying a custom OutbountHandler object that did what I wanted it to. In case of executing  stand-alone test cases I can override org.switchyard.component.soap.deploy.SOAPComponent class using the ServiceLoader framework, but replacing this component in JBoss AS gets tricky unless I move out the code a completely separate project. If I chose to hack up the SOAP component any further I might just have to do that anyway, but I would not like to go down this path.

What am I missing? How can I get to any of the objects I'm interested in -- the dispatcher, the client, the request/response objects -- without forking the code? Any ideas would be much appreciated.

--Artem

[mageshbk]

You should be able to configure the interceptors using a cxf.xml file. Place this in the root directory of your jar file or classes folder of war file.

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:http-conf="http://cxf.apache.org/transports/http/configuration"
       xmlns:jaxws="http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws"
       xmlns:cxf="http://cxf.apache.org/core"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://cxf.apache.org/core http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/core.xsd
           http://cxf.apache.org/transports/http/configuration http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/configuration/http-conf.xsd
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
           http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/jaxws.xsd">


    <bean id="MyInterceptor" class="org.switchyard.demo.MyInterceptor"/>


    <cxf:bus>
        <cxf:inInterceptors>
            <ref bean="MyInterceptor"/>
        </cxf:inInterceptors>
        <cxf:outFaultInterceptors>
            <ref bean="MyInterceptor"/>
        </cxf:outFaultInterceptors>
    </cxf:bus>
</beans>

[arteme]

Thank you for the answer, Magesh, I figured out that I can add a CXF configuration and specify the client-specific interceptors there. I put the following in src/resources/cxf.xml and got the code working in stand-alone unit tests:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:cxf="http://cxf.apache.org/core"
       xmlns:jaxws="http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd
         http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws
         http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/jaxws.xsd">
    <jaxws:client name="{urn:com:broadsoft:webservice}ProvisioningService"
                  createdFromAPI="true">
        <jaxws:inInterceptors>
            <bean class="my.provisioning.InInterceptor"/>
        </jaxws:inInterceptors>
        <jaxws:outInterceptors>
            <bean class="my.provisioning.OutInterceptor"/>
        </jaxws:outInterceptors>
    </jaxws:client>
</beans>

This and a context mapper configuration allows me to communicate HTTP headers from underlying CDI bean to the interceptors using SOAPMessage's mimeHeaders, so I can finally track cookies from the bean.

My problem now is that I can't get it working on JBoss AS (EAP 6.1). I've tried renaming the cxf.xml to "jboss-cxf.xml" or "jbossws-cxf.xml" and moving it around to WEB-INF and WEB-INF/classes (I use a WAR deployment), but nothing seems to help. I'm quite perplexed at this point, if I need to install JBossWS separately into the EAP or not and why it works in stand-alone unit tests...

[mageshbk]

No, you do not need to install JBossWS, it is included in EAP 6.1. I think the client side file is not picked up by default in the server environment. As you have mentioned the file names did not matter, I need to investigate further. Can you please file a JIRA and I will have a look at it? Thanks for trying this up and helping us! There is one last hope for you right away, wherein you can configure these interceptors or the Session maintain property in a global way within JBossWS. You can look at this guide and see if that is helpful.

https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/JBoss_Enterprise_Web_Platform/5/html-single/JBoss_WS_CXF_User_Guide/i…

[mageshbk]

I looked at it further and have created a JIRA for this:

[SWITCHYARD-2049] Add Spring support for SOAP Component - JBoss Issue Tracker

[arteme]

Thank you for looking into this. The dependency on Spring is not at all apparent, especially to newcomers. I have also found https://community.jboss.org/message/802369 that may be helpful in getting these all components to play together.

[arteme]

Following the post I mentioned earlier, I updated jbossws and installed spring framework module packages with jbossws. I know, updating jbossws shouldn't be necessary, but I did that anyway for the convenience of installing  jbossws with packaged spring and to avoid any conflicts between the version of jbossws and spring. I followed https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/JBWS/JBoss+Modules#JBossModules-SpringbasedincontainerBuscreation instructions to enable loading cxf.xml, but to no avail. I don't see any messages about loading cxf.xml at all.

Could this be related to the TCCL setting you mentioned in the bug?

[mageshbk]

Did you see the Pull Requests attached to the JIRA? I am linking them here

[SWITCHYARD-2049] - Removed TCCL modification by mageshbk · Pull Request #668 · jboss-switchyard/components · GitHub

[SWITCHYARD-2049] - Enabled Spring in SOAPComponent by mageshbk · Pull Request #351 · jboss-switchyard/release · GitHub

If you know how to build from source this will help you out. If you need assistance in building from source then please have a look at here

Development on SwitchYard

[arteme]

Thank you, I will try it out.

In the mean time, I got forward by actually implementing <soap:inInterceptors> and <soap:outInterceptors> support in the SOAP component for my use case.  Since interceptors can also be configured in cxf.xml, I wonder if it would be redundant to actually support these (or is there a reason they are currently not implemented)? If there is any interest, I could submit my patch to the project.

[kcbabo]

This exact question came up in our developer meeting this week - if we have support for cxf.xml, do we even need the in/out interceptor model any longer in the SOAP endpoint config.  The general consensus is that they are redundant once cxf.xml support is in place, but there are a couple things to keep in mind there:

1) AFAIK, we have not confirmed that cxf.xml interceptors are respected on service bindings through JBossWS.  Chances are this will be fine, but I don't think we have confirmed tihs yet.

2) We will not drop support for in/out interceptors in 2.0, but we will likely deprecate and recommend that people use cxf.xml instead.

Opinions and feedback on the proposed course of action are welcome.

[arteme]

I have tested this now and yes, https://github.com/jboss-switchyard/components/pull/668 helps. That is, in the basic setup of JBoss EAP 6.1 + Switchyard 1.1.0.Final + JBossWS 4.2.3 (with spring) + https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/JBWS/JBoss+Modules#JBossModules-SpringbasedincontainerBuscreation, cxf.xml is not loaded. With that pull request on top, cxf.xml does get loaded.

Thank you very much!